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I'm a huge fan of League of Legends' Dominion gametype. One of the complaints I hear regularly is that Dominion doesn't have a ranked mode. Right now, Dominion's highly skilled summoners must choose between "curbstomping pubbies" in blind pick mode or waiting for a year in queue for draft pick mode. A ranked mode would solve these issues, as players would be encouraged to play more and would be able to see improvements in their gameplay.

A lot of people don't think that Dominion is ready for ranked. Most of the arguments along these lines have something to do with poor champion balance. What do they mean by "bad balance?" I have a suspicion that many of the complaints stem from a lack of counter-knowledge more than any fault of the developers.

Want to crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentation of their women? Blood Sport investigates the entirety of all things arena for gladiators and challengers alike. C. Christian Moore, multiple rank 1 gladiator, examines the latest arena strategy, trends, compositions and more in WoW.com's arena column. Also, apparently, arena history is discussed as well, as evidenced by these last two articles. Mhmmm arena history -- the best kind.

Listening Music: ELO with "Don't Bring me Down." Alright, my bad for not dropping some Elo in the last article. I felt the wrath of my readers. I offer a humble sacrifice.

Last Week: We talked about the beginning of arena and how the old rating system differed so dramatically than the one we have today. The Elo system was implemented on a firm foundation, but quickly eroded due to...

This week: Personal ratings and why we have them!

Season 3 and season 4.

While the old system was grand in many respects, it had flaws. The biggest flaws with an Elo rating system which only had one rating (team rating) were point-selling and win-trading. Both of which are virtually non-existent in today's arena world. Personal rating was created in season 3 to end both of these problems. Even though many arena-boosting groups tried to duplicate their success before season 3, it was much harder, and therefore, much more rare.

If you aren't familiar with point-selling, it was a pretty big deal early in WoW's arena history. Essentially, a high-rolling exceptionally good PvP team would level up a 3v3 or 5v5 team to around 2100 or 2200 rating (at the time, these ratings were unbelievably good -- think 2700 or 2800 in today's arena world). Then, they would sell spots on the team for gold. Individuals would buy 1000+ arena points for 500-1000g. It would usually be advertised through trade and it would be assumed that the individuals would be entering three to four losing arena games. The team rating would suffer as a result, but they'd still get the points advertised.

Last week We talked about griefers in arena and some of the tools they can use to make WoW a much more miserable place.

This week We'll be talking about the old arena system in The Burning Crusade. From season 1 to season 4, we used a completely different system to gauge where we stood among everyone else on the arena ladders. The shift from an Elo rating system to a Gaussian Density Filter caused more changes than most people realize. We'll get into that a bit later -- don't worry, it's not all mumbo-jumbo.

Arena representation dropped 65% from season 4 to season 5. One of the reasons players decided to no longer participate in rated arenas was the change in the arena rating system.